A place to escape

A place to escape

La Comarca de as Cinco Villas: a place to escape. This motto summarizes perfectly what is the Comarca de la Cinco Villas which merges heritage, nature and multiple activities in a unique space, in many cases, totally unknown by many tourists.

Las Cinco Villas has surface of 3,067 square kilometres the most extensive Comarca of Aragon. A territory of 31 municipalities (plus 14 villages) with over 30,000 inhabitants.

Its peculiar geographic and geological features, with a pronounced gradient from north to south, make this region unique for its many very different types of landscape.

For example, one passes from the plains of its most southern and central part, cradled by the beauty of The Bardenas Negras, different from the Royals, but equally attractive; to the pre-Pyrenean area, on the northernmost side, crowned by the Sierra de Santo Domingo, declared a Natural Protected Area by the Government of Aragon, the first Aragonese region to have this distinction, granted on April 8, 2015.

These orographic differences give rise to a wide variety of landscapes, which have their own personalised ecological systems, from the leafy pine forests of Castejón de Valdejasa, to the drier lands of Las Pedrosas, where espartos, white wormwood and all kinds of scrub up to the exhilarating floristic wealth of the Bardena, an ecosystem with its own life to practice multiple activities while enjoying an amazing wildlife and natural landscape.

And let’s not forget the many species of mushrooms that grow in the Sierra de Santo Domingo and its foothills: Sierra de Luesia, Montes de Biel and Fuencalderas and Sierra de Uncastillo. Those interested in this subject may attend the annual Mycological Days in las Cinco Villas, an activity that has been recognized as one of the best tourist experiences of Aragon, in its 2017 edition.

Along with the mushrooms, the mountains of Cinco Villas is inhabited by many animals, from small insects, and fishes, to game, such as deer and wild boars. A paradise for those who enjoy hunting and fishing in the many swamps of la Comarca, where the reflection of the water is a spark of the sun that shows the life that there is in the area.

Landscaping Beauty

La Comarca de las Cinco Villas has 857 types of landscapes -according to the Best Landscape map developed by the Government of Aragon-, some of them have the highest landscape qualification (10).

Among them, the Fontanizas, Puy Navarro, Pígalo, Raya Alta, Reacuba, Bañón-Puy Moné, Valdiguar, Facillón and the municipality of Biel. All of them, in the northern part of the Comarca. However some others can be found in the flatter areas like The Bardenas (Portillo and Caidero) and Laverné reservoir (Ejea).

And hundreds of fields! Since we must not forget that -excluding the towns of Ejea and Tauste, where industrial activity is very relevant- the Cinco Villas have always been linked to agriculture.

Not surprisingly, our Comarca is often given the nickname of “the granary of Aragón’ thanks to the importance of their cereal production, that actually goes back to Roman times and has lasted to this day, especially in the so-called Colonization towns (dependent on towns such as Ejea, Tauste or Sádaba), where about 70,000 hectares of irrigation were created under The Bardenas channel, which allowed to bring water from the Yesa reservoir. This important modernization step made history and changed the course of life to hundreds of people.